2016 - Awards Season: WGA - Nominations

January 4, 2017

The Writers Guild of America is the latest group nominees to be announced. There are a lot of categories that WGA hand out awards, but only three of them are theatrical releases. The list of nominees include several major Awards Season players, like Hidden Figures, but there are also some surprises.

The categories and nominees are...

Best Original Screenplay

• Damien Chazelle for La La Land
• Berry Jenkins and Tarell McCraney for Moonlight
• Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea
• Jeff Nichols for Loving
• Taylor Sheridan for Hell or High Water

• Tom Ford for Nocturnal Animals
• Eric Heisserer for Arrival
• Theodore Melfi and Allison Schroeder for Hidden Figures
• Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick for Deadpool
• August Wilson for Fences

• Jeff Feuerzeig for Author: The JT LeRoy Story
• Alex Gibney for Zero Days
• Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser for Command and Control

• There is not a single surprise in the Best Original Screenplay. I guess Hell or High Water could be the closest to a surprise, because it opened in August, which is too early for Awards Season. But even that movie has a lot of previous nominations.
• Best Adapted Screenplay, on the other hand, has one of the biggest surprises of the year so far. ... Deadpool got a nomination. This is awesome for anyone tired of Awards Season ignoring popular films, because they are not the right genre to win awards. Too many voters think they are not serious enough to be given this kind of acclaim. Granted, I think Civil War was the best-written comic book movie of the year and I really hope Hidden Figures wins in this category, but I’m happy a wider range of movies is succeeding during Awards Season.
• Arrival is also a bit of a surprise, as Sci-fi films, even intellectual ones, are more likely to be passed over in favor of more typical Oscar-bait movies.
• As for the Documentary category, only Zero Days is on the Oscar shortlist, so it should get a boost. That said, it is still too early to tell where things will end up.

- C.S.Strowbridge

Filed under: Awards Season, Deadpool, Captain America: Civil War, Manchester by the Sea, Nocturnal Animals, Arrival, La La Land, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, Loving, Moonlight, Zero Days, Command and Control, Author: The JT LeRoy Story, Fences, Robert Kenner, Rhett Reese, Eric Schlosser, Paul Wernick, Alex Gibney, Damien Chazelle, Eric Heisserer, Jeff Nichols, Jeff Feuerzeig, Tom Ford, Kenneth Lonergan, Theodore Melfi, Taylor Sheridan, Barry Jenkins, Tarell McCraney, August Wilson, Allison Schroeder